Backup Equipment

[Squishie89]

I'm curious what major equipment you keep on hand as backups. 

I have heaters, return pump, powerheads. 

Possibly considering keeping a Neptune apex energy bar. 

[DaJMasta]

I haven't really kept any duplicate equipment because my tanks are relatively small and I've got a good number of accumulated bits.  I do keep a spare heater for each tank, but otherwise, some combination of the small utility pumps and wavemakers will suffice for flow in case one of the big ones go out, even if they look unsightly.

 

Would be harder to manage if I had hundreds of gallons, but maybe in time you get some spares from upgrades and things in that case.

[Gatortailale]

I have a box of PVC fittings & pipe, bulkheads, pvc glue, pumps, wet side for vortechs, gyre parts, extra LED power brick for Radions, batter pwr air pumps, pwr. strips; screen for net covers, heaters, maxi-jet pumps

 

Running 5 tanks of various sizes I like to have lots of parts around for any emergency - like a few years agon on x-mass eve one of the bulkheads in overflow that I guess did a bad job in 2005 plumbing up flexible pvc line decided to start dripping.  I had a spare bulkhead and stuff to fix.  

 

As to your question on apex energy bar - I learned my lesson the expensive way in the past of using the outlet to control a heater and ended up causing the 832 to not respond.  Since then switched to let inkbird control heater cycle and set EB outlet as backup should tank get too hot.  It may be cheaper to just have a few spare pwr. strips as backup as you can always manually cycle on/off; or even buy some lamp style timers for short term solution until you can source apex replacement bar.  

[nburg]

I keep a return pump, extra power head and run 2 heaters so I guess one acts as a backup. I don’t have a lot of space so I don’t want to store a bunch of stuff, so just enough to key things going until I can run to a store to buy a replacement